So how exactly do you create a giant ladder that lights up the dawn sky?

Although it looks pretty magical, the artist actually used a large weather balloon to suspend a 500-metre (1,650-foot) long wire ladder, which was studded with gold fireworks, quick-burning fuses and gunpowder, Matt Payton reported for Yahoo News.

First, Guo-Qiang sent the weather balloon rocketing up into the sky, dragging the ladder with it, before setting off a chain reaction of explosions along its length to produce the light show.

The New-York based artist is famous for his large-scale installations and is no stranger to using explosions in his work.

This particularly spectacular 80-second spectacle occurred in Quanzhou City in China's southeast Fujian Province on 15 June 2015, just before dawn, but Guo-Qiang has been attempting the 'Sky Ladder' since 1994.

His first attempts more than two decades ago in Bath, UK, were thwarted by strong winds.

In 2001 he was ready to try again to celebrate Shanghai hosting the APEC summit. But then the September 11 attacks happened and air space access was heavily restricted, so he put the light show on hold again.